Degreed Dialogue: Upskilling in an Economic Downturn

Degreed

Tuesday, March 28th, 2023

Share

Recession. Pandemic. The unknown.

If it’s not one challenge impacting the smooth, successful application of your L&D programs, it’s another. Uncertainty reigns, so now’s the time to take stock — and to think about making some essential changes.

“It’s intelligent and wise for us to always be prepared, wherever we are on that roller coaster,” said Collin Poage, Degreed Senior Director of Business Consulting. “It’s always great to take a step back and think a little bit about how you operate with respect to the ups and downs.”

To ease the whiplash and help you even out the ride, we’ve created Degreed Dialogue: Upskilling in a Downturn — How to Do More with Less, a videocast conversation designed to help L&D leaders illuminate learning as a secure, business-critical function that can help organizations survive and thrive.

Let’s take a look at three key takeaways from this lively, insightful conversation hosted by Poage and Annee Bayeux, Degreed Chief Learning Strategist, who welcomed guest Fiona Leteney, Senior Analyst at Fosway Group, the leading HR, talent and learning industry research firm. They’ll help you position L&D as a critical business function and keep talent development off the budget chopping block: 

Measure and share the impact of learning to get buy-in.

L&D often struggles to get a strategic seat at the business table, Bayeux said. “What kind of credibility does L&D have when we’re super focused on completions?”

See why:

• Measuring success beyond completions and other traditional L&D metrics is critical — especially in today’s economic climate, and especially when you’re making the case for learning to the C-Suite.
• Understanding the audience for your metrics is crucial.
• L&D should show how internal talent development programs and technologies can help reduce attrition, boost performance reviews, improve engagement, increase employee satisfaction, and reduce external spending on training.

Turn challenges into a springboard for positive change.

Tough times don’t last forever, so hopefully you’re making plans for how your business can recover once the inevitable economic upturn happens.

Explore how you can:

• Think about the recession as an opportunity to inspire and develop people who can come up with new ideas or new products.
• Build workforce skills if cost-saving measures have reduced or eliminated business activities like travel, for example, and people have more bandwidth to learn.
• Embrace agility and resilience, to help your organization bounce back faster.

Stay focused on helping people perform. 

What does it mean to invest in your people, and what does that look like during tough times?

See why: 

• Investing in your people means prioritizing what your business needs and building skills that meet the demand.
• Many learning leaders are now looking to engage more people — particularly internal subject matter experts outside learning teams — who can create relevant content in agile ways and help position L&D closer to the business.
• Everybody is talking about skills — and it helps to frame investment in skill building as a win for stakeholders across your organization.

You can survive and thrive.

Even during good times, understanding the supply and demand for skills at your company is critical to your upskilling and reskilling strategy.

When a recession looms, it can be more helpful than ever to know which skills are growing or declining at your organization. Get started today. Explore the Degreed Recession Survival Kit for L&D Leaders. 

Let’s talk more about how your skills gap, and how upskilling can help your company not only survive but thrive in a weak economy. Got questions? Contact a Degreed representative.